Ichikawa City's Marine Products Industry

The history of Ichikawa's marine industry until the modern era was focused mainly on salt-making on a long distance of shallow sea area. During the Edo Period (1603-1867), the salt produced here was considered inferior to Jusshuen (a variety of salt produced along the coast of Seto Inland Sea Region), but because of the administrative and military protection provided by the Shogunate (government) at that time, this tradition of salt-making has continued to flourish. However, with the nationwide expansion of the distribution network that focused mainly on Jusshuen salt, and the weakening of the Shogunate government protecting this industry, the salt industry has been terminated. As a whole, the salt industry has continued to thrive until the Meiji Period while maintaining the small salt businesses.

At the same time when the old fishing system was implemented in 1902 (Meiji Period), a fishing cooperative was also established in Ichikawa. Around 1909, the fishing grounds of Funabashi and Urayasu were borrowed to begin cultivation of nori seaweed. However, traditional salt-making along Tokyo Bay was given more importance than nori cultivation at that time, and because people derived their income partly from fishing or farming, and also with a few fishing grounds available, nori cultivation only became a side job for them.

Later on, despite the recurrence of stagnation and decay of salt-making industry, it still managed to thrive until the big tsunami disaster of 1917 caused great devastation to the industry, which gave way to its permanent degradation. Along with it, the fishermen continued to reclaim fishing grounds, and soon more importance was shifted to the cultivation of nori seaweed.

In 1925, reform was implemented in the fishing industry, and a new system took effect in the marine industry wherein the people were able to gain rights in using some parts of public waters to expand the marine agriculture industry of nori cultivation, alongside with Urayasu and Funabashi.

Nori cultivation involves painstaking efforts that can be difficult to express by words. Most especially during the harvest season, starting from the early morning of an extremely cold winter, the nori growers, paddle a small boat going to the nori farm while struggling to break the ice along the way. Ironically, despite the hardship, they find it hard to give their harvests a market value commensurate to their efforts. With this situation, nori growers had a very hard time in making both ends meet in their living.

 
However, the introduction of modern technologies brought many improvements. In particular, the traditional method of using natural materials in creating the nori farm was replaced by the net method in 1936, which was considered a great stride in nori cultivation industry. In 1960, artificial seedling technique was developed, and in 1965, the frozen net storage cultivation and the technique for developing other varieties were also introduced. Since then, many innovations were introduced, and from 1972, the floating system cultivation became prevalent. Moreover, with the progress in mobility, paddled boats were replaced by motor boats, hand gathering was replaced with the piano wire method of gathering, and the hand-made processing activities on land surface were replaced by mechanized system, such as during the drying process. Almost every year, new methods were being developed. The technological reform during the Showa Period of 1950's to 1960's, brought great transformation to the nori cultivation industry. In recent years, new technologies in land surface seedling cultivation, use of optical microscope, and the high speed techniques, machines, and facilities for gathering nori plants have been applied.